Legal Professional Video Visiting Terms and Conditions
Legal Professional Video Visit/Consultations to Cloverhill Prison
Terms and Conditions
The Irish Prison Service (IPS) is commencing a pilot scheme to improve video-link access to prisoners in Cloverhill Prison for the purposes of online legal professional visits/consultations with clients in custody. The objective is to provide an efficient and co-ordinated service to enable legal professionals to conduct video-link visits/ consultations with their clients who are in custody remotely. It is hoped that this project will deliver cost and time savings for legal professionals and clear records of prisoner access to legal representation. It is intended to run the pilot scheme for a period of 3 months in Cloverhill Prison, review the experience with stakeholders, and consider extending the pilot to other prisons. The IPS has invested in soundproofed video-booths in Cloverhill Prison to aid the confidential nature of such visits or consultations in a video-link format which should allow for in excess of 100online visit/consultation slots available across a week if all parties observe the operational requirements.
- Booking a Legal Professional Video-Visit to Cloverhill Prison
1.1 From the commencement of the pilot project, all ‘Legal Professional Video-Visits’ with prisoners in Cloverhill Prison must be booked using the online booking form only. The booking form is available on the Irish Prison Service website at www.irishprisons.ie. Legal professional users who wish to book an ‘Video-Visit/Consultation’ with a client in Cloverhill Prison should select the ‘Visit A Prison’ Menu, then ‘Request Professional Visit’ and follow the menu options for the ‘Legal Professional Video-Visit Cloverhill Pilot’.
1.2 A legal professional video-visit is not confirmed until a receipt email is received by the applicant confirming the date and time of the visit. This receipt email will be auto-generated from the booked visits application.
1.3 The video-link provided will permit the legal professional to connect to the video-visit from any device using Google Chrome.
1.4 The booking form will require the Legal Professional to confirm the following details:
- Prisoner’s Name
- Prisoner’s date of birth
- Prisoner’s PIMS number
- Legal Professional’s Name
- Legal Professional’s Visitor IDNumber*
- Legal Professional’s Company
- Legal Professional’s Business Address
- Legal Professional’s Business Email Address
- Legal Professional’s Business Contact Number
- Court Jurisdiction
- Proposed Time & Date for Visit
1.5 *Requestsfor legal professional video-visitswill only be processed for Legal Practitioners with valid Visitor ID numbers.If you do not have a visitor ID you will be required to initially attend a prison physically with valid photo ID to receive one.
1.6 When completing the booking form to conduct a legal professional video-visit with their client in Cloverhill Prison the legal professional will be required to tick a box to confirm their understanding of these terms & conditions attaching to such video-visits, including, inter alia:
- A minimum of 1 working days’ notice must be given when making a booking to allow the request for a legal professional video-visit to be processed appropriately;
- The video-link for the legal professional video-visit may be shared with a total of 4 legal professionals working with the client, (which may include an interpreter engaged by the legal professional), but must not be shared with any person that is not a legal professional;
- The legal professional booking the visit must ensure that they never permit any third-party to be present when participating in the video-visit with the prisoner;
- The booking of the legal professional video-visit will be specific to the named prisoner. If the named prisoner has been released or is unavailable, the video-visit slot is not transferrable to video-visit with another prisoner;
- Where a pattern of repeated no-shows, or repeated cancellations less than 24 hours ahead of the allocated legal professional video-visit slot is recorded, access to legal professional video-visits will be suspended pending review;
- Anyone logging on to the video-link provided with less than 5 minutes left on the time slot allocated will be recorded as a ‘no-show’;
- Having regard to the exigencies of the prison environment, every effort will be made by staff to ensure that the prisoner is present and logged on to the video-visit at the allocated time;
- Where a delay for the video-visit is on the part of the Irish Prison Service a record will be maintained of same for review by prison management;
- The legal professional must ensure that the device that they are using has Google Chrome and can support the video-visit;
- Any breach of these rules will result in suspension of video visits;
- The current process for requesting all other professional legal visits to Cloverhill Prison remain in place for the duration of this pilot project details of which can be found on the Irish Prison Service website irishprisons.ie.
- Legal Professional Video-Visit times available for Cloverhill Prison
2.1 If all parties meet the requirements there will be in excess of 100 x 30-minute time-slots available across the week in Cloverhill Prison for Legal Professional Video-Visits at the times set out below:
| Mondays to Fridays | Saturdays |
|
17.30 – 18.00pm 18.00 – 18.30pm 18.30 – 19.00pm |
10.00 – 10.30am 10.30 – 11.00am 11.00 – 11.30am |
- Telephone /Email Contact for the Pilot Project
3.1 For the duration of the pilot project, no legal professional video-visits to Cloverhill Prison can be booked by telephone or email, they may only be booked using the dedicated web-form.
3.2 Telephone queries regarding any issues arising with the process can be directed to 0578691450 between the hours of 10am-12.30pm and 2pm-4pm Monday to Friday.
3.3 Email queries regarding any issues arising with the process can be directed to clovlegalprofvisits@irishprisons.ie between the hours of 10am-12.30pm and 2pm-4pm Monday to Friday.
3.4 The staff assigned to this telephone number and this email address at 3.2 and 3.3 above will provide information to support the booking process only, they cannot provide any other prisoner or prison information, and cannot take a booking for a legal professional video-visit.
3.5 Connectivity issues arising during the time of the legal professional video-visit will be addressed by the local staff of Cloverhill Prison overseeing the video-link suite, the staff in the suite can be contacted directly regarding connectivity issues at the time of the visit at 01 6304506. The staff attending this telephone number may only address connectivity issues at the time of the visit and cannot make a booking for a subsequent visit.
- Record Keeping
For the duration of the pilot project careful records will be maintained of all legal professional video-visits. It is intended that the information collected will aid further improvements to the system.